BERLIN (Reuters) - The Italian government must deal with its high national debt and cannot export the responsibility or pass it on to other European Union countries, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told the Handelsblatt business newspaper.

“The Italian government must deal with its high level of state debt, nobody can take the responsibility away from it,” Scholz told Handelsblatt in an interview. “It can’t be exported either or transferred to European partners.”